--the heaped-up remains of thousands of miserable
creatures slaughtered to please the Ashanti ruler's lust for blood. Poor
crumbling bones, mouldy and sodden as the rotten wood of older trees,
yet once clothed with form and vigour, lay everywhere, while under the
cotton wood trees skulls were heaped and vultures hovered about in
hundreds.

One evening we attended our master on one of his official visits to
Bantama, the fetish priest's village where we so narrowly escaped
execution, and were able to thoroughly inspect the gruesome place. The
most horrible blood-orgies known to superstition and fetish-worship were
almost daily practised there, and in nearly every abode there were stools
and chairs smeared with human blood, drinking bowls were stained with it,
and some vessels were half-filled with black clotted blood. In the
priests' inner chambers, dark dens filled with foul odours, to which we
entered with Betea, we found not only the whole apartment smeared with
blood, but bones and portions of human remains lying about openly, or
wrapped in rags to serve as charms. One building, probably the residence
of one of the chief priests, was embellished with mud-moulded panels and
scroll work, and the columns facing the principal quadrangle were fluted.
The colours were the prevailing white clay, and red ochre plastered upon
the wattle and mud pillars.

Suddenly, as in the dusk we left this house, a loud horrible shriek
sounded. At first we thought some poor wretch was being sacrificed, but
again and again it sounded, and all turned pale, even the royal Ocra
himself.

"What's that, I wonder?" I asked Omar, who, bearing our master's sword,
was walking at my side.

"The gree-gree!" he gasped, looking round in fear, while at that moment
there sounded two ear-piercing blasts upon a horn.

"Hark!" cried Betea himself, trembling. "The gree-gree is out to-night!"

I remembered that I had been told by one of our fellow-slaves that the
gree-gree was a great fetish who appeared horned like a demon, and killed
all persons he came across. None dare lock their doors when the gree-gree
walked, and only the King himself was invulnerable. This no doubt was
another trick of the priests to frighten the superstitious natives, and
at the same time wreak vengeance upon those who had offended them. Once
again the notes of the horn rose weird and shrill, and died away. Then
Betea, himself affrighted, turned to us saying:

"Fly! fly for your